6 Tips for Newbies to Become Competent to Your Job Quickly

When you’re just starting out in a new work environment, it’s better not to be eager to express yourself, but to take a good look at your office relationships, job responsibilities, and how your colleagues get along with each other at first. Never judge others, show your likes and dislikes, or even take sides without knowing any background. You don’t know them, you don’t know what happened, and you have no foundation in this group, every word you say can just prove your curtness.

Instead, you can be as patient as possible. Listening is a smarter way to communicate with others on many occasions. After a period of observation and collecting information, you’ll have a certain understanding of the interpersonal environment in the office, and then your opinions and attitude will be much more important and acceptable.

Work always involves repetitive, mechanical tasks that are tedious and time-consuming to complete manually. It’s better to finish them flexibly with office software and save your energy for more creative work.

There are tons of office software on the market that can help you processing data, editing words, pictures and so on, such as Microsoft Office programs (which contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). They can meet the basic needs of your job and save you a lot of time. It’s not a simple task to master these tools though, due to their powerful functions. To learn the features and usages of Microsoft Office preliminarily, you can check MyOfficeTricks to read tons of useful tips for beginners.

People are more likely to feel comfortable and a sense of belonging in a nice environment, so that to work more efficiently and creatively. To get used to your job quicker and better, it’s a great idea to create an office environment you enjoy. A clean and neat desk, a comfortable cushion, a good set of stationery, the tea or coffee you like to drink, a beautiful plant, etc. will make you fonder of staying in office.

But also noting that don’t put too much non work-related recreational stuffs on the desk. People always prefer relaxing and playing to serious work. So, it’s better not to test your will power with all kinds of temptations. Just take those things out of your sight so that your attention won’t be easily distracted when working, and your efficiency won’t be reduced accordingly.

Responsibility is one of the most important qualities in the workplace. To do better at your position, you must realize that your job isn’t just a tool to make money, it’s your own business, and you’re responsible for its process as well as results.

Assuming that you are in the team work involving other colleagues, everyone certainly has his or her own part to finish. If you cannot finish your job on time with quality and quantity guaranteed, it will inevitably affect others and slow down the progress of the whole project. In this way, you will hold the whole group back.

Therefore, it’s the initial task for every beginner at work to develop a good sense of responsibility. A person lack of responsibility, even with competent professional skills can still be difficult to be fully engaged in working and eventually get somewhere. And this work attitude is also hard to be recognized by colleagues and superiors.

Everyone’s job responsibilities are clearly divided. You should definitely give priority to the tasks within your area of responsibility. Sometimes there may be colleagues asking for help or passing on their work to you, which in effect increases your workload. In this case, many newbies may agree to help again and again because they want to make a good impression on their colleagues. But in the long run, people may assume you won’t say no, and push more things to you.

Saying “no” reasonably doesn’t mean saying “no” to all requests regardless of the situation, which is bad for your relationships in the office. If you have the time and energy, you can do something innocuous once in a while. But when your own business isn’t done, or you’re embarrassed by a request from a co-worker, you have every right to decline politely with appropriate reasons.

When you first time step into the workplace, you are probably very young and unavoidably to become emotional and childish occasionally. Especially when you are stuck in some troubles, it’s almost an instinct to deny your own wrong and try to escape from it. But if you do this each time, you can never face your true deficiency, and stay where you start with less possibility to learn and to grow.

Mistakes and inadequacies in work are not to be feared. The key is to learn from the experience of failure. Only by correctly understanding and evaluating your own performance can you sum up effective work experience, avoid mistakes as much as possible in the future, and use your strengths to avoid your weaknesses, or make up for each other’s shortcomings through teamwork.

Going from a student to a professional is a big identity change. You have to start making decisions about your future and taking responsibility for every decision you make. You also have to learn to deal with various people and situations in a mature way. It’s normal to feel confused and even doubt yourself at first. But with time and experience accumulated, you will be sure to adapt to your work and interpersonal environment, and become more and more capable and independent.